Name of the experienceName of the experienceWebtasks for Learning Webtasks for Learning

Professional and Academic English: Professional and Academic English: Adapting the WebQuest Model. Adapting the WebQuest Model.

Universidad de ZaragozaSpain

Course: Technical English for Chemical Engineering.

Participants: ◦ Students: undergraduate students in the 4th

year of the Chemical Engineering degree.◦ Researcher: Maria José Luzón Marco

Task: “Writing up a recommendation report on environmental issues”: A webtask for English for Chemical Engineering

Purpose:Purpose:

Developing the students’ wreading competence.

Getting students familiar with the discourse practices and disciplinary genres in their fields.

Engaging students in cognitive activities necessary to communicate in their discipline, such as synthesizing, comparing, evaluating.

The projectThe project In this webtask students are asked to

write a recommendation report on environmental issues.

A WebQuest integrated within a genre-based approach to ESP, where emphasis is placed on getting students familiar with the values of the disciplinary community and developing their genre awareness.

StepsSteps

1-Students use their background knowledge of the discipline to assess the situation.

2-Identify problems. 3-Use a variety of primary sources to find

and articulate solutions or answers. 4-Evaluate the relevance of these sources

for their purposes. 5-Synthesize and transform information to

produce an output (e.g. a written report, a presentation) as a response to the situation described in the task.

ResourcesResources

EPA (the website of the United States Environmental Protection Agency) (http://www.epa.gov/) to start research

In the second activity, they are asked to access the official blog of the EPA (http://blog.epa.gov/blog/) and one of the following wikis:

Envirowiki: http://wiki.envirowiki.info/Main_Page

Greenlivingpedia: http://greenlivingpedia.org

ResourcesResources Searching for multimedia files.

Multimedia search engine: (http://www.playaudiovideo.com/index.htm)

Sharing information in order to find the best solution to the problem: http://www.diigo.com/

Studied contents Studied contents

In this webtask students are asked to write a report on an environmental issue. All learners have already studied “Environmental Technology”, a compulsory subject where they study topics like water pollution, air pollution, waste, and so on. In this subject, students work on the contents of environmental technology, but not on the discourse they need to talk about these contents, or share the results of research

Theoretical supportTheoretical support

Being electronic literate involves engaging in new thought processes, in order to interact with new text formats (e.g., hypertext and interactive multiple media), new reader-related issues (e.g., new purposes or motivations for reading a text, high-level metacognitive skills) and new activities (e.g., publishing online, participating in online synchronous and asynchronous exchanges) (Coiro 2003)

Theoretical supportTheoretical support Wreading competence, which we define

as the ability to understand the pragmatic, discursive and semiotic features of online texts, harness their affordances and interact with them in various ways, find relevant information in different semiotic modes within and across these texts, and relate and meaningfully use such information in order to achieve a specific purpose, complete a task or produce an output (Luzón and Ruiz-Madrid, forthcoming).

Theoretical supportTheoretical support A model of webtask which draws both on

SLA principles and on research on digital textuality and new literacies is proposed.

A model with the purpose of helping students of ESP develop: ◦ The discursive competences they will need to

function effectively in an ever changing workplace context.◦ Learning autonomy.◦ New multiliteracy competencies.

Theoretical supportTheoretical support The WebQuest format (Dodge, 1995)

affords the design of learning activities that can be integrated in an ESP course to help meet these needs.

ESP WebQuests should reflect the kind of communicative situations in the students’ discipline, and engage students in cognitive processes necessary to manage these communicative situations

ReferenceReference Luzón, M. J. (2010). Webtasks for

learning professional and academic English: Adapting the WebQuest model. CORELL: Computer Resources for Language Learning 3, 29-44.